Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, has officially made his stance on Robert Roberson’s death row case very clear. According to Paxton, he believes that the man is still guilty of killing his daughter and should still be put to death. This is reportedly the first time that the man has ever issued an official comment on the case since the execution was halted.
They have attempted to mislead the public by falsely claiming that Roberson was unfairly convicted, Paxton said in a press release regarding the 2002 death of Roverson’s daughter, Nikki. The man added that the delay was allegedly One-sided, extrajudicial stunts that attempt to obscure the facts and rewrite his past.
Nikki was abused by her father and died due to the trauma he inflicted, the office wrote. The 57-year-old father was convicted of his daughter’s death after prosecutors claimed that Roberson killed his daughter by shaking her and repeatedly striking her which resulted in a blunt-force trauma injury, otherwise known as shaken baby syndrome.
Texas death row inmate Robert Robersons reaction after receiving last-minute stay of execution
Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson has execution halted minutes before lethal injection
Roberson, who has been on death row since then, has tried several times to appeal the conviction only to be denied. However, the man’s plight has not been ignored and mere hours before his death by lethal injection, last week, was given the news that he would be getting a stay of execution.
Upon hearing the news, Roberson allegedly began praising god Amanda Hernandez, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, told CNN. “He was shocked, to say the least,” Hernandez stated. “He praised God and he thanked his supporters. And that’s pretty much what he had to say.” Had Roberson been executed, he would have been the first person executed in a case involving shaken baby syndrome.
A new execution date for Roberson has yet to be set, however, the man and his army of supporters which includes several bipartisan members of the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence do not plan on taking too much time to celebrate. According to Roberson’s attorneys, they plan on petitioning the Texas Supreme Court and Greg Abbot, Texas’ Governor, for full clemency.
The vast team fighting for Robert Roberson people all across Texas, the country, and the world are elated tonight that a contingent of brave, bipartisan Texas lawmakers chose to dig deep into the facts of Roberts case that no court had yet considered and recognized that his life was worth fighting for, Gretchen Sween, his attorney, said in a statement.
Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, told CNN that they were in “uncharted waters.” According to the outlet, the decision to not execute Roberson was handed down two hours before he was slated to die. During that time several things were happening within the Texas judiciary system.
It was revealed that in the minutes leading up to the execution, a group of Texas House members who believed in the man’s innocence came together and asked the Texas Supreme Court to issue a restraining order against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and Texas Department of Criminal Justice Correctional Institutions Division which halted the execution initially. However, the order was struck down by a divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Going back to the court, The committee asked the body to issue an injunction against the groups which halted the execution again. For over 20 years, Roberson has spent 23.5 hours of every single day in solitary confinement in a cell no bigger than the closets of most Texans, longing and striving to be heard, committee member Rep. Joe Moody and Rep. Jeff Leach said in a statement. And while some courthouses may have failed him, the Texas House has not.
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